I spent about four and a half years making the game solo. Did all the art, engine, music, etc, you get the idea. Everything but the voices.

I made a weak effort at marketing because I didn’t think the game would sell based on the nonexistent following at that point. I was right for the wrong reasons. People like the game well enough for what it is, it just didn’t reach the right people.

I distributed around 50 keys through Keymailer. Fewer than 10 made videos. Most of them were “let’s play this game for 20 minutes to an hour” and none of them cracked 50 views. Some of these people put out multiple videos like this each day, like a factory. One nice thing is that one person got really into it and it was fun interacting with them. Aside from that, Keymailer was basically worthless to me.

I kept a current page on IndieDB and an active Twitter (a few tweets with pictures each week) for a couple years. I got a few follows but it never really took off. I guess I didn’t do it right. It ended up not helping.

Every single person who emails you asking for a key or keys is a scammer. Delete them all, don’t give them a second thought. One guy had an impressively good bullshit story, had a website and everything with some recent posts. Domain email and everything. Gave him a few keys. Saw them up for sale the next day (he was the only person I gave that specific amount to.) Banned the keys immediately. Don’t buy keys from a rando, buy direct or from an established third party retailer.

As of right now, Wish Lists are around the mid hundreds and organic sales (not friends/etc) are barely into the double digits, if that.

So, another indie failure here for the pile. TL;DR: Do marketing, don't be me.

Edit: Some good advice in this thread for aspiring devs, learn from my mistakes. Great example of what not to do.

It sucks the game didn't do well but I'm not in this for the money. I'm going to keep updating it even if it never sells another copy. I just figured I'd share my, uh, marketing folly as info and a warning to people (like me once) that think you can get away without promoting.

The platformer genre is incredibly crowded, and Steam is full of indie platformer games, both good and bad. Even though yours looks promising, you have to understand many people will dismiss this kind of game just because it feels like "the same thing" (even if it is not!).

Organic discoverability in the Steam Store is at its lowest (and will be lower as more games get released in the coming months), so you can't rely on Steam selling your game. You need a marketing campaign, whatever that means for you (there are many ways to do it, with many possible budgets and outcomes, it's up to you).

Your end-users (gamers) don't care if your game has been developed in four years or four months, or if you've used Construct 2 or programmed the game in assembly and calling the GPU ISA directly. They only will care about what they see in the game, what they hear and read from their trusted sources about the game, and what they feel from the game if they get to buy it.

you have to understand many people will dismiss this kind of game just because it feels like "the same thing" (even if it is not!).

I want to reinforce this point. The link to your website goes straight into a game-play trailer which does nothing to set it apart from any other paint-by-numbers platformer. Synthy rock music and cutsey cartoon characters fighting normal platformer bosses with occasional cut-scene text boxes. Your postmortem mentions voice work but nothing in that video implies I'd find any.

This is a little frustrating because I can guess there's a some innovation there because your patch notes suggest "recruiting", "side quests". But there's no "info" or "about" or "features" pages on your site.

You mention the "Millie Megavolte" series as an inspiration. I'm not familiar with it but perhaps advertising in the places with a similar user base will have more luck?

I’ve been making electronica for years. What I’ve learned about the final mix is the shit no one wants to hear.

It’s 75% mixing, 20% EQing, and the rest falls into the last 5%.

No one wants to spend hours upon hours of playing with the levels, but that’s where it’s at. The twenty percent EQing is cleaning up the various frequencies to make room for each other (two sounds can’t occupy the same frequency space happily). The last bit is in the composition itself, the synths, sounds, effects, etc.

Listen to the final mix on every sound device you have available, headphones, car, decent speakers, shitty speakers, phone speakers. It’ll show you things you didn’t know you missed, and everything sounds better on headphones.

Audio engineer here - making drums sound good and take up an appropriate amount of space in the mix is something everyone struggles with (unless they’re a seasoned professional), and specific advice would depend more on what sound you’re going for, but a good all-purpose piece of advice is to add gates to each drum so that they come out clear and you don’t hear much bleed from the other drums. You can then add compression to each track (I’m honestly not a huge fan of bussing until the very end). I usually have the attack put around 1ms for drums. Then add EQs, then bus all of the tracks out to one output, and put an additional compressor on that. Keep in mind, I’m still learning and these are by no means everyone’s go-to method, it’s just how I go about doing it and thought I could help. Cheers

I run a recording studio and one piece of advice I have to give is to take every piece of advice you're given not as advice, but as that person's preference. I would personally never process drums how it's described in the comment above.

That trailer shows nothing that would be ever interesting for anyone to buy. No gameplay, mechanics, music, story or art style that would make it seem different from all those other platformer games. Art style in fact looks ugly enough to make people disinterested in the game alone.

Whether any of that is true, or just the trailer is bad, it doesn't matter because that's all the potential buyer sees.

It's important to stress that Steam releases something like 50 to 100 games per week. The "Upcoming" page shows games that will release in hours. The "New releases" page shows games that were released today. And the number of games released is only accelerating.

My on game was three years in the making, the least you could say is that it's a high-effort game - a hundred thousand lines of C++, gigabytes of custom assets etc. That doesn't make it commercially successful either - those who buy it are happy with it, but so few know of it that it doesn't make much a difference on the numbers.

Games that don't have a large following, social media presence, or advertising will fail commercially. The takeway is that you need to either consider finishing the game a personnal success regardless of sales, or try moving up by getting an editor on board.

I honestly do, I just never end up buying anything. At the end of the day, I end up spending much more money on more mainstream games. I’m hoping to find some indie game that fills me with the same excitement of watching Mass Effect trailers, the terror of Silent Hill gameplay, or long running strategy of X-Com or Civilization, but usually it all looks same-ish.

Which is a shame that nothing seems to really break free, because I’d love to jump on more indie games, but they’re easier to come by than money.

Which would be fine if there was a diverse selection of great quality games, because people enjoy different things and love great games. Instead, there is a lot of say average-quality stuff that was ported from mobile, and a few games that are pumped out every month/week/day (in extreme cases) by asset-flipping developpers.

Hey, your game looks pretty cool. But from the initial screen shots, (I guess the cockpit is super minimalist), it wasn't apparent to me that it was an actual space flight game. I thought, empire builder? And had to click through to the video to figure it out.

Let this be a warning- you need to start marketing your game as soon as you have a solid idea of what your game is. Have art assets and an elevator pitch? Market those, get people interested- even if it's only ten people, get somebody to care. When the game is ready to sell, you'll have an audience.

Did you follow up with the people who expressed interest in your game, OP? Those who made videos, they're small press. Do not underestimate them. Offer interview opportunities, keep them in your loop as it were, they're your press contacts now. Content has a long tail.

I don't think it's too late for OP's game, but it's going to be hard to gain sales traction this late in the development cycle. I wrote a book about reaching the press. If you're listening, OP, you may find it helpful- I'll dig up the link once I'm at my PC.

EDIT: Here's the link, quite a few folks have found the book helpful. If you're struggling with your PR, may find it handy.

You spent four and a half years building something and you're going to give up after 2 weeks? What the hell?
Seems like a severe case of expectations versus reality here. You expected a big win early on and didn't get it so now all your motivation has fled, leaving you thinking you've "failed" when in fact, you've only just begun.

First of all, what a massive achievement it is to actually put that amount of time and effort into something and see it to completion! 90% of people who want to make a game never get so far so you should be proud of that.

Secondly, you now have a marketable product with which you can try new marketing techniques, listen to feedback, tweak, alter, iterate. Take away the expectation that you MUST earn money from this and instead use it as something to gain valuable experience from. When you expect nothing to come from it, you can open your mind to try all sorts of things with no fear of "failure".

Some of the comments in this post are GOLD and you should listen to them. Suggestions about highlighing the unique qualities of the game, the mixed message you're giving to potential customers with the adult tags and so on.

I do enjoy these post-mortems though, they are some of the most interesting content on this sub. Seems like a decent trade for me to take a couple of minutes to look at his trailer. Turns out I really don't like the art style.

There are 3 things you can sell really easily...tragedy, sex, and sports. Open up the daily paper and prove me wrong. You see a lot of tragedy posts here that get bumped up to near 4 figures and yet a lot of other stuff doesn't...it doesn't make this OP a better post, it just falls into the category of what easily sells. "Success" isn't one of the "S"s in what sells.

That's actually not "Success", that's "Status". Status is often used to skip over the whole icebreaker phase where you need to build credibility. Helps to overcome the fear factor. And you most certain don't need to see success to gain status. As a fictional wise man once said...

Isn't that a bit cynical? How do you do any post mortem without showing what it lead up to? Even if you leave out links, I'm likely gonna dig through comments and profiles to at least verify "yeah, I can see why this sucks" or "looks great".

Are you only allowed to do it if it's a "success", like that 3d platformer from a couple days ago? If so, the sub just becomes a cesspool of survivor bias, like many other tech subs.

Some of the best post mortems I've read on the sub come from failed experiences and what they learned.

That may be true, but there is still a lot of useful stuff for the rest of us in this thread. And I think anyone who finishes a non-trivial game deserves a bit of credit. Most of the people on this sub have never done it!

Exactly this, many great games haven't become successful until well after their launch not to mention the fact that if you keep working on new games you will find that the people that do like your game will often be keen for your next game. Even if this game isn't super successful it will help develop a fanbase for your future games.

To add to this, if people are keen on your future games - it will generate some backwards interest too. I often play other releases from indie devs I like, just because they had one good game I enjoyed.

Some people already said it, but still, your game looks REALLY generic. To market it in any way, you got to have SOMETHING that stands out. An unusual combinations of genres, a distinct artstyle, a gameplay mechanic, a crazy storyline, a flashy thumbnail on Steam, an absurd trailer - it can be virtually anything, but it has to jump out at anyone who will stumble upon your game.

The first few gameplay clips in the trailer are of the player running into projectiles and getting hurt. There aren't any unusual/interesting mechanics until 20+ seconds in, at which point most people will have already stopped paying attention.

The $10 price-point is a beast. You have LOADS of competition there, honestly. Sadly, the Steam "More Like This" carousel that comes up lists games mostly in the $2-$5 range, with a couple of $10 games. I'm a little bit surprised that you didn't open with a 20% off sale just to seed some numbers/install-base here, as an $8 game is psychologically an insta-buy, as that's nearly $5, while the $9.99 price-point is $10, which is a double-digit price. And other double-digit price games include Hollow Knight and Shovel Knight and so on.

At 400 conversions from Wishlist to sales at the $8 mark (let's say everyone jumps on the sale), that's a bitter pill for 4.5 years of work. BUT, the hope there would be that this would build a critical mass of reviews.

And you've already committed to doubling the world size on the Steam page. :( So let's get you paid somehow.

Is there a demo available? I've been playing through another $10 price-point game (that I bought on sale for $1.49) and a demo of that game would have helped immensely. With your own game, the controls look reasonably tight (or you're an expert with them, or a bit of both) but in an action platformer, I really need to know that the jumping isn't floaty (for example) at the $10 price-point with very few "purchased" interviews to cite.

I think this is recoverable. You should be paid for your time and effort, as the video makes this look like a reasonable game. Your responses to bugs aren't insane/butthurt/emotional, so that's a good mark. I really suspect the price-point needs to head down to $7.99 territory to help the initial crowd overcome the inertia of wishlisting-forever-and-buying-when-it-goes-on-sale.

Just my $0.05 or so.

But I would disagree with you that everyone who comes asking for a key is a scammer (no, I'm not asking for a key--but a demo will be immediately played, and I've added the game to my wishlist!). The actual numbers are more like 99% scammer, 1% solid person who will explore your game inside and out. The whole trick is to find that person and get them to act as your advocate. If your game is good enough (Spelunky) and priced right (Spelunky) and gives enough playtime (yep, Spelunky), you can even find advocates post-sale (I bought at the $2.49 price-point, I think. Maybe at the $4.99 price point) who will YEARS LATER continue to point to your game (Ghost 1.0 as well).

TL;DR: In your case, I think a free demo would help remove a lot of question-marks around this game. OR putting this on a 20% sale to bring the price psychologically closer to the $5 mark. Either of these approaches, I strongly suspect, would net you conversions from "Wishlist" to "Install Base."

Very casual dev here, making free games for fun little intent to ever sell, so not sure if this is naive to ask but...

Do week-one sales really define a game as a success or failure? This game was released 11 days ago according the to steam page. Is it not an option to start marketing it now, post-release? It seems like plenty of AAA games continue to run commercials post-release, and it's standard practice for other media and physical products.

Yes. It's incredibly rare for at least normal games to suddenly gain a huge number of sales after week one, in fact after week 2, there are formulas to tell how many sales you'll have for the entire life of your game. Gamers are kind of predictable.

That being said, it's not a complete death, SOME games are discovered after launch. Stardew Valley (I assume) is the exception (that's important, exception) but it can happen a game does gain traction after launch, but for 99.9 percent of games, your biggest weeks are your first two weeks.

Sounds like the secret is to just say you're in "Public Beta" while you review feedback and make the usual needed tweaks/bug-fixes to the game. Once you have enough of a following you slap a 1.0 on it and call it a release. ;P

You get the added bonus of being able to deflect criticism for any initial bugs or game design flaws on it being "Just a beta".

My point was more that calling it a "Public Beta" or "Early Access" seems like an arbitrary distinction. Just seems like a way to deflect criticisms while marketing your game with a buggy demo prior to full "Release".

This is actually the only responsible way to sell software in my opinion. No one can be 100% certain they've gotten all the bugs out until the program is in the hands of real users and being used every day. To say you have a finished product before then is almost always irresponsibly optimistic.

That's what all of gamedev is man. You can literally never stop working on a game if you wanted to. You could add new features for ever and ever or make the choice to go into beta, and then whenever you feel like it's ready, release it. There's no like criteria globally for every game that exists.

This was Arks thing. It was early access for 2 years before finally "launching" which I think shouldn't be allowed.

It's a shame the game is a platformer as you could have done something like Notch did with Minecraft. Simply build up something simple and get player feedback by selling it cheap to begin with (I think minecraft was only a couple of pounds when it first launched). Then with each new addition, any new players will need to pay a higher price to reflect the new additions.

I wonder if that predictability has to do with gamers themselves or with the way game-sales platforms promote games and how studios preform marketing though? With inde games especially it seems longer-term marketing might be beneficial, especially with games where the genre isn't so clear cut. I would imagine those formula hold true for AAA games and your average console gamer, but at this point games are such a broad market there are a lot of large sub-markets that can be targeted.

I just can't help but imagine that for the right kind of games, with the right kind of marketing, there is something to be found in the 'long tail' of sales.

Personally I find I mostly buy much older games (months to years past release), things I've heard mentioned a several times by word of mouth or read something interesting about their latest update. I don't actually purchase that many games though, so I might represent a very small and/or unusual sub-market. =/

I was following his blog starting in 2013. It was definitely getting a lot of engagement for a game that early in development, I remember 10-20 comments within the firs few weeks of a post, which probably means a lot more people were reading it. You can look back at some of the old posts starting here to confirm.

Yes. It's incredibly rare for at least normal games to suddenly gain a huge number of sales after week one, in fact after week 2, there are formulas to tell how many sales you'll have for the entire life of your game. Gamers are kind of predictable.

Depends on the market.

If you're operating like the AAA developers that is quite true. The first weeks represent the bulk of the sales.

For hobby and small-scale development, the long tail is what matters. It isn't the first, second, or maybe even the fifth release that does it. I've a childhood friend who pulled that off successfully. He would iterate, each time releasing more stuff knowing there should be a market interest in, just had to find the right levers to pull. Around the fifth iteration each marketing push generated sales not just on the item he was marketing, but on all his items. When he launched his eighth major update all the items became popular, not just the latest product. Two years of additional iterations let him grow his business to the point where he could hire the updates out and effectively retire.

Is that post your friend? It sounds like a legit strategy, but I'm not sure (out of ignorance) if this would still apply today.

Here's a good quote:

As a personal example, shortly after I released Dweep in mid-1999, I began getting requests for an expansion pack of more levels. So I released an expansion pack. Players also complained that Dweep moved too slow and needed a speed control. So I added a speed control. Then players wanted another expansion pack, so I released that. Then players wanted a level editor, so I added that. Then players wanted to be able to post their own levels, so I added a free levels archive.

That turned out to be too much work to maintain, so I eventually took it down and replaced it with a forum where players can post their own levels. And when the official forum was finally taken offline, one of the players put up his own fan site and forum to continue making new game levels available.

During this time I also made major revisions to the web site, the marketing process, the ordering system, cross-promotions with others games, and the price (raising it from $9.95 to $24.95 while increasing the number of levels from 30 to 152). Most of Dweep’s sales were a result of these later refinements, not the initial release.

That wasn't my friend that got rich from it, no, but the story you quoted is typical.

The item remains, though, that for small-scale businesses and individuals trying to make some money, that the large one-off release is not the same critical time window as it is for the AAA blockbusters that must sell multiple million copies to break even.

Lots of iterations, coupled with some intelligent and methodical research about what to improve, what to build, what to focus on, that is the way for a small group to become profitable.

I mean honestly, what do people expect? They have no brand, no name recognition, no following. They put out a product with minimal marketing. The product was an investment of time and labor, but did not have the fortunes required to test it on a wide scale of hardware, or to test across a wide group of potential customers, or to mass-market to everyone in the world. So of course it will not have a blockbuster launch unless you somehow win the lottery of product releases.

Instead individuals and small businesses must focus on growing the products (more than one) and their small communities over time, until eventually they are nurtured and hit a critical mass to become profitable.

I often read about ideas, and games that no one cared about when they released. And then, one day, snow ball effect kicked in. If I play a game that is new for me, I also don't care if it was released yesterday or years ago. I care if it is fun.

I think week one is less important if you release your first game. No one knows you, so how should they know about your game? It is different if you already released games and have collected a player base.

For both assumptions, I have personal experiences to tell.

20 years ago, I made some shareware apps. No games, but also no productive software. I made them just for fun, but nevertheless did not release them as freeware, but shareware. (For the younger ones: Shareware was software behaving like a demo until you entered a license key you purchased) When I released my first app, of course interest was rare. I kept going on for years, polishing my one app, adding some very little other ones, not interested in success by numbers, just being proud to write apps some people were using and even told me they enjoyed it. Some even payed for using my flagship program. And then, at one point a famous e-mail newsletter wrote about my program while I was developing my second big app. Downloads went up, payments raised, and when I finished and released my second app 3 years later than the first one, I sold a lot licenses in the very first days.

So, another indie failure here for the pile. TL;DR: Do marketing, don't be me.

Buddy, hate to break it to you, but this isn't a marketing fault, it's a fault with the product:

What is your unique selling point?

What do you do in the game and why is it fun?

What's your elevator pitch for this game?

Can you answer any of these? Would they convince you to buy and play this game instead of... Hollow Knight? Cup Head? Crypt of the Necrodancer? Rouge Rogue Legacy? That new sonic game?

Notice how these questions don't cover execution, because you've got that covered.

The art looks passable, not really amazing but good enough. I didn't like the art of the rogue legacy that much and the pixel art of crypt of the necrodancer was good, but pretty minimalistic too. So that's fine. The metal seems to match the fast running? So that's fine too.

The gameplay looks... unfocused. Why are you running around? (Sonic is the fastest hedgehog, he just runs fast) Why are you fighting? Are you fighting hordes of enemies, single bosses or are you really just navigating the level?

Idk about the story. But you sure didn't put any focus on that in the trailer.

I agree with this sentiment. I haven't played the game, but I did take the time to look at the collateral you've put out. I can't see anything compelling about the game from what you've shown or said. Add to that the fact that the 'platformer' genre is not only saturated, but has been for decades, I can't imagine that you'd be surprised in the luke warm response from consumers.

BUT all that said, you've done a heck of a job from a technical standpoint. Doing it all yourself puts you in a great spot for the next time you try this, or, alternatively, if you wanted to go work for a development studio as a portfolio item.

Don't take this the wrong way as I'm giving my view point as a consumer(not a dev).

Your game looks like something I'd find on Newgrounds over a decade ago. Not gonna spend 10 dollars on something like that.

I get it. You feel like it's an amazing game but for all I know, as someone who hasn't played it, the game is terrible. It probably doesn't help that there's nudity in it as well so you can't exactly target children.

I see the influence Dust had on you quite a bit with the art style and from the bits of dialog I saw that too.

It's a good place to start but there's also a major difference in the two, Dust had the gameplay to back it up and it was readily apparent when you saw it played.

Marketing also definitely helped that game. I don't think it would get nearly as much exposure as it did if TB hadn't made a video on it.

That said not every game is a masterpiece lacking marketing and I feel like this sub needs to be more realistic with itself if it wants to be helpful to not just new devs like yourself. I see this same mindset all around even in AAA studios that marketing was bad. It's entirely possible and very likely(considering how many games are released a year) your game was just not that good.

Don't take this the wrong way as I'm giving my view point as a consumer(not a dev).

This is exactly the kind of input OP should have sought out before releasing, and should certainly be looking for now, since he's apparently finally attempting marketing (though in a roundabout way).

It's entirely possible and very likely(considering how many games are released a year) your game was just not that good.

This is why I don't think it's necessarily wrong to tell people in this situation "learn from it and go build something better." Giving up on this might not feel great, but then not giving up on it seems a lot like sunk cost fallacy, when there's so much he's already learned and so much he should be learning from this thread... whatever he does next, provided he's learned, should be better in terms of marketing, targeting, content, and execution. And... pretty much every other possible way.

I imagine it feels pretty crummy, not only having your game fizzle on launch, but then getting some pretty tough love from this community when you're coming to try to do us a favour by sharing your story.

But you've done something that VERY few people could ever dream of doing. And don't let anyone tell you that you've wasted your time, because you haven't. Life's a bitch, the truth's a bitter pill to swallow and you've got one hell of a chance to step back and assess everything you've learned, and take the good and the bad in stride and keep going forward doing something that compels you.

For what it's worth I think there's some pretty good advice in this thread and I really hope to see you posting here about your NEXT project.

You kind of hit the nail on the head. You didn't do marketting because you had no followers, you had no followers because you didn't do marketting.

The other thing I feel you did wrong on is banning those keys, assuming you only gave a small amount to the guy (10 or so) let him sell it, if they go through that asshat, fine but maybe they'll talk about the game to their friends.

Now on the other hand, and I don't want to bash your game, but that video on your website is attrocious. You start off with REALLY loud music that doesn't stop. You made the music? Ok but honestly the video starts on a bad foot there. As well as having a meaningless dialog. You need a slower start that builds up.

In addition your gameplay video shows me LOTS of stuff, but the quick cuts and the flashes makes it unclear what I'm looking at.

The game doesn't look bad but this is putting me off to this game.

As for your steam page, you have fake quotes (or are they real quotes that you didn't properly attribute). That's a REAL red flag in my book. You're not the Stanley Parable, don't try to pull that unless you're really a comedy game. Also a story with a bad touch... yeah... uhh that's making me a little nervous. Add in tags of sexuality and nudity, that's a huge red flag as well.

Rookie mistake, but don't ever promise future content updates with out knowing you have a player base out there. It's a common mistake but A. games should be content complete no matter what the industry says. B. You now made a promise, you might not be able to abandon this game with out losing some future customers.

About it being a spiritual successor to Millie Megavolte, is that popular? You might want to not mention that (I assume it's a game you made, if not, it's not big enough to really do much for your game)

But here's the thing, if you truly believe in your game, I would recommend redoing your trailers, give marketing a little more effort. Redo your steam page (Small changes). You have 7 positive reviews, so maybe you can get some attention from it. Even if it does nothing, maybe it'll get you practice for how to market your next game better.

Oh and next time considering cutting down on the features. Stuff like multiple different playable characters, outfits, and collectibles is great on a box, but the best platformers usually focus on one character. Additional characters are great small (hopefully) updates, but get your Mario/Shovel Knight character perfect before you do anything else, and then, you might not need another character.

I think the first part of the trailer is the most problematic - and people mostly only watch that. OP should show what his/her game is about (gameplay-wise) in the first 20-30 seconds. I watched the whole trailer and am not sure, there is definitely jumping.

I know when going through the discovery queue I give about 10 seconds to a video. If it’s logos, skip, if it’s boring, skip, if it’s overwhelming, skip.

A game trailer needs to present its hook immediately. What will make me want to play your game? What’s your angle? I’m on my phone and outside right now so I’ll check OP’s game out later. You got to get your point across and really damn quickly to have any hope of retaining attention.

I feel like Steam might not be the right platform for Indie Developers. The generic store page takes away most of the charm that makes an Indie Game. I have found that websites like itch.io give a much better platform. I personally use GameJolt because it lets you customize the way you want to present your game in a really nice way. It is also easy to find the kind of game you are looking for on there. Additionally it gives you the option to write a DevLog, which not only can help you keep track of what you have been doing on your game, but it also gives you a way of showing people the amount of work you put into your game.

Try putting your game up on one of those platforms. It would be a shame to see such a dedicated and well polished game rot, just because steam makes it incredibly hard to find and market.

The game looks pretty good. The art is nice and animations are fluid. Looks like a game I would get for my kid, BUT I go to the store page and it tells me it contains "Gore", "Violence", "Sexual Content" and "Nudity".

Why would you add that to a cute, 2D platformer? Do you even know who your target audience is?

If you did some marketing and the game reached me, I would honestly buy for my kids to play. Actually, after looking at the trailer, I would have bought it today if it weren't for that problem.

And for this crowd, cartoon-boobs in a slinky outfit seem entirely within reason.

Your point is interesting, though: do you believe this is a case where it's easy to see Horseman Bojack Bojack Horseman as a show for your seven-year-old rather than being explicitly told that, no no, it's a show for you, an adult, to watch? Meaning, if I view BJH through the lens of, "I'll let my kid watch this," and find I'm grotesquely wrong, I'll be turned off. While if I view BJH as a show that I might enjoy--and find many layers of abyss-gazing within--I'd enjoy it.

So, here’s the $XX question: how would a dev make it apparent there’s nudity and sexual content, ESRB opt-in aside? And if they are fleeting in nature and not a key component of the storyline, how would a dev best make this content apparent?

Look at The Witcher 3: it’s a really strong game. It’s also not something I’d let an 8-year-old play. 90% for the gore, 7.5% for the using and manipulating people, 2.5% for the sex scenes (of which there are ... four? But they’re easily on par with Penthouse of the 1980s/1990s). Let’s say that we’re on day zero of CDPR’s launch. No reviews. How ought they best inform people, “this game has some sexy times?”

I’m genuinely interested because At Some Point (TM), I will release a game commercially and that game will have decidedly adult content. I’m trying to find a balance between, “I don’t want to offend people” and “I want to tell an extraordinarily sad story about people, so it won’t be all good times here.”

Likewise, for this developer, what’s a good path to walk that will clue people in to content without turning them off from even judging it for themselves? Maybe I’m good with my kid seeing boobs but totally against them seeing rape, for instance. Are we sort of back to the old Handkerchief Signals of the 1970s, or is there something better?

I like comics and mangas as well as platformers and metroidvanias but absolutely cannot stand anything with furries, anthro and other forms of sexualizing animals. I think you don't really understand your target audience. Maybe you should advert this game in specific furry / porn communities instead of general youtubers.

The art and animations are what lost me. They should have hired a professional artist/animator and this game could have done very well.

From an outisider: it looks kind of like furry anime. Is this a terrible thing? No. but it segregates your market. Plus everything just looks amateurish. The graphics aren't fun to look at. Everything seems flat and the animations are stiff. It isn't terrible, just not polished.

That being said, it does look like gameplay is fun and the story is worthwhile.

The tags are completely accurate actually. I bought the game yesterday... there is literally a brother-and-sister goblin duo who just straight up openly talk about how much they love having incestuous buttsex.

I'll add my first impressions, but I'll be a bit more critical than the other commenters. Nothing personal, I genuinely dislike 95% of the games I see.

First of all, while the graphics are kinda unique if you look closely, but the overall feel is like if they were bought on the asset store. It might just be the vector-ish art style, but the first impression I got looking at the game was "meh, another thing put together on the asset store". There doesn't seem to be a coherent color theme. For example, the flame pillars feel very out of place.

As of right now, Wish Lists are around the mid hundreds and organic sales (not friends/etc) are barely into the double digits, if that.

seeing this screen with the sharks dancing around and some circle thing above them ... I mean dude what the hell is that. There are dinosaur-ish humanoids all over the place in the video, and suddenly there are normal sharks dancing? It makes absolutely no sense. And the circle thing above them? That's like something a mobile game would have in it (the type of thing they try to sell you for $).

comparing the two above with the first image in the video, which has quite nice looking graphics, and most importantly, consistent art style ... I can see the first image draw people in, but a lot of the scenes you show look WAY worse. For example, this pink scene has a boss that fits the area, attacks that also somewhat fit the boss, so I'd say good job on that, but the player character looks extremely out of place. This castle scene looks much better too.

Overall, there is one thing that I dislike about all of the fights shown, and that's the quality of attacks and particle effects. Most of the player characters in the game look real promising in terms of design (if you isolate them from the scene), even the bosses. But you can't spend 100 hours making the characters pretty, and then do an attack animation that's just a white moving circle. Or a few circles/elipses bursting out in an explosion. Apart from the inconsistent graphic style at some places, I'd say this is probably the most visible thing.

Especially the male-fairy death animation as shown in this scene makes it look really really really cheap. If you spend more time on your death and attack animations, the game will look 100x more appealing.

Sidenote, I know this seems like I'm totally bashing on your game, but looking at the other comments, people here always say "dude it looks great, but ...", which imho doesn't convey the right message. I know it's probably a cultural difference (I'm not from the US), but it feels more honest from my point to just say some things are flat out wrong instead of sugarcoating it.

Extra sidenote, don't take this as "the game is poop". You had a lot of good ideas along the way, and spent an incredible amount of time working on this. Just because I showed a few examples of where the game doesn't look good it doesn't mean it invalidates your effort on it. More importantly, all of the mentioned things are very fixable.

I've noticed that Steamspy seems to show ~700 as the lowest number above 0. You can easily observe it by going to any genre, tag or even recent games and just sorting by owners. The lowest ones are 0 and then you get to 692.

As for the sharks, it looks like a minigame referencing the Superbowl with the "left shark" fucking up.

It's clear you put a lot of work into it. I feel for you, man. Savage lessons learned. But you have this under your belt now and can probably parlay this experience into bigger and better things in the future if you stick with it.

Congratulations on finishing a game by yourself, though. That's no mean feat, and something to be proud of regardless of its economics/popularity. It really looks great.

Did you find any sort of community that responded well? I'd be surprised if there's nowhere on the internet that is into talking animal characters. Maybe abandon the mainstream-selling-indie-games route and focus on getting it in a smaller number of more enthusiastic hands.

The wishlist conversion rate scares the crap out of me! Doing a release myself in a few weeks and my wishlist is barely over 100 after 1 week. Judging by the conversion rate I managed to scrap together from other data it's around 7%. Seems to fit from your data.

The game looks great, I agree with /u/GISP about giving speed runners a chance to try the game.

That's one of the more generic looking platformers I've seen. Also assuming that's not just for a trailer, I don't think that music suits it at all and got tired of it almost straight away.

Some of your boss ideas look somewhat novel and although I don't like the art style, it does look like a decent amount of effort went into a decent amount of content putting it all together with the effects and whatnot.

I think you're price point is too high personally. There's an endless list of similar or better looking games of the same genre you can get for $10.

I don't see a point to any of it, looks like a game made for the sake of making a game, don't see a story, or even any consistency and when you don't see those and you get the generic cutesy characters and graphics most people rightly assume piece of thrown together rubbish that hopefully makes some money.

I think you just need to market and represent it better because what you've shown doesn't do a great job at it. Bottom line is this thing you made needs you to give it it's Identity a lot more clearly.

-i have no idea what Folly Zeran has committed. it should be very clear or at least strongly hinted at.
-on the main pic for the vid, it shows the other characters around Zeran(?), but....Zeran has an entirely black face with almost zero detail.
-if this is the main character he needs to be the most interesting, emotive and expressive character. he is center stage for the entire game, i should be able to empathize, like/dislike, love/hate him.
the mouse girl with the glasses is more interesting because she....has a face.
heck, even the earless purple haired girl on the ground clinging to his leg is more expressive.
i cant tell what emotion Zeran has, he's just....THERE.
-is this a Harem around him?
the females seem very dependent or interested and at best he seems aloof.
-its impossible to tell what's going on in the relationships between the characters and why they care about each other.

-you need to show your company logo animation and name.
if i love your game how do i know what company to look for with your next project?
it also helps with pacing for the vid, making people wait a little to see the action is good.

-overall the game is lacking detail, everything looks like a good draft or placeholder.

-what is the central hook of the gameplay which makes this "not another platformer"? <------ this is the main problem.

-Okay the music starts out intense and stays that way, it doesnt ramp up, cool down, reprise, surprise or vary at all. it has no pacing.
if that's what you wanted, great, but it doesn't take the viewer on a journey, it says "WE'RE HERE, raaaaaAAAA!!!!!!!!" and it does not match what you're showing.

-it has a fast paced Sonic vibe, its good, but...it would be better to build up slow, show some of your cutscene chats to give us an idea of: what the world looks like (show us your epic scenery [without any combat, so the background itself gets to be center stage for a few moments] that makes the world come to life) who the characters are, why i should care about their struggles, what the main themes of the game are, who is the enemy/threat to the land & why.

-the music doesn't suit the gameplay. we see fast paced and slow paced action and non-action, the music needs to adjust a bit to it.

-check out the trailer for Dust: an Elysian Hero it is an excellent trailer for pointing out what you're not doing.

-you said there is voice acting, i didnt hear any.

-i saw an alternate armor set, but...he got it from the dancing sharks?
does the alternate armor DO anything (new dash attack etc) or is it mainly visual with plain stats behind it?

-when the character does his dash attack into an enemy, he kind of bounces off of them and has a strange "i just slammed into a wall" reaction animation. it does not look like he just hit an enemy.
the impact force is lost, it makes the attack feel hollow.
this ruins the feel of combat.
enemies need to stagger when struck, or at the very minimum, get knocked around a bit.

-it feels like enemies dont react to taking damage, they just keep attacking or moving as though nothing happened.
it needs "enemy in pain/frustrated" animation/fx.

-it looks like most animation is rotation and its kind of flat feeling, there doesn't appear to be much Squash and Stretch.

-too many effects that result in a plain boring white colored puff of smoke or white explosion.

-when you use the same effect rapidly and it just repeats (white smoke behind the character during a dash), it needs more variance in how quickly it appears and especially how fast the fx disappear, its size, its direction.

-if the content of the game is Adult oriented thats fine but make it obvious at the start on the title screen (have the characters doing things they do) or a short text warning "intended for Adult Audiences".

-the dancing sharks was funny, is that better as a reveal during gameplay instead of in the trailer?

-the final background behind all other elements cannot be a solid or mostly single color, it needs to pop and sell the rest of the scene. it just blends in with everything.

-the background everywhere needs slightly more detail and decorative bits.
more small patches of grass that waves as you walk over it, trees that sway when the wind picks up, lanterns that swing around when attacks zoom by (and light the scene), broken huts, something to break up the repetition of elements.

-i see a bunch of boss or enemy mechanics and thats great, it looks like the fights are actually different.

-i assume the bosses have a little intro scene where they talk to the character, flex their muscles, do a threatening stance and then engage the fight.

A lot of people tend to blame marketing when really it's an issue with the game that started at the very beginning: in the game design phase.

When you first start deciding to make a game, you really have to ask yourself yourself why someone would buy your game over the countless others that exist in your genre. Come up with a list of all the marketable values of your game (mechanics, art style, themes, story, concepts) and ask yourself, for each one, how many games in your genre also have that and ask yourself if they do it better. If your game has a marketable value that no other game in your genre has, congratulations because you now have a unique selling point that should be highlighted in your marketing.

However, it's not just enough to have a unique selling point because if every other marketable value of your game has one or more well-selling games that do it better... then your unique selling point alone might only be good for a niche market and not for a wider audience.

If you have neither unique selling points nor marketable values that are on par with or better than what already exists, it's probably a game not worth making.

EDIT: Changed last sentence from "marketable values that stand out from" to "marketable values that are on par with or better than".

I've just seen this in my Steam queue this morning and my thoughts on it immediately were "Great and cute artstyle" and "Yet another platformer, no thanks" and immediately dismissed it. The platformer genre is so crowded and overdone by indies that interest in it by virtually everyone is at an all time low. I doubt sincerely I'll even touch a regular platformer in the next decade, unless it's insanely good, or a metroidvania.

And looking at it, there's really nothing about it that stands out that'd make me go "This will change my mind about platformers". Apart from the graphics, it just looks like 'another' platformer.

I can share a bit of my experince, not really the same thing as it's Kickstarter related, but doing a KS campaign is sort of like launching the game, except you're trying to get people to buy it before it actually exists. What I can tell you is that we launched in April 2016, but since 2014, from the very inception of the game I was every. God. Damned. Day on Kickstarter, seeing what campaigns did well, taking notes, and just doing my absolute best to research how to get people to find out about my game. I didn't do this so I could mould my game into something else - it was never going to be anything but a very classic-style point and click adventure - I had to do it so that I made sure that I reached as many of those (comparatively) few fans of the genre as possible.

I put almost as much work in trying to reach communities that would be interested in the game and struggling to build a fraction of a following as we did in the demo we were preparing for the campaign. It paid out, we made more money than we initially asked for, and we could finally stop working on soul-crushing client work and make our dream game, which we've been at for more than a year now. Throughout, communicating with our community via Kickstarter, discord and twitter not only helped keep eyes on our game but also majorly kept us from burning out, since we're working out of middle of nowhere Transylvania where nobody know or cares about indie games. So, yes, getting in touch with gamers as early as possible is essential, and it doesn't have to be clickbait buzzword marketing bullshit, just because you're not a corporation talking down to them, it's a gamer to gamer conversation.

Sure, I'm scared shitless of releasing next year, but I know I'll do everything I can humanly do to get the word out there about this thing I've been putting my almost every waking hour into, and why the hell wouldn't you? It can be the greatest game in the universe and it won't count for shit if nobody knows about it. Yes, advertising sucks, marketing is evil etc. - that might be the case for huge corporations who only see their clients as numbers, but this is your labor of love and you want people to love it, too. It really isn't about the number of sales, it's about how many people you can convince to fall in love with it. Make that happen and you can consider yourself successful.

I wrote a blogpost on Gamasutra specifically about the marketing and struggle for visibility we did previous to launching our campaign; it is about Kickstarter but I think it applies to launching a game, too. Please don't just throw it out into the world, it helps no one. Put as much effort in letting people know it exists as you do in making it. Yes, community management and social media take a lot of time you could use for game dev, but game dev without anyone caring only entertains you, not your potential audience.

I released a game more than a year ago and it too didn't go too well. It too had no following, despite being covered by big Youtubers. Its sold 150 - 175 in that time and half of that was the first 50% off sale. The second 50% off sale sold 3 copies.

There was someone else on Reddit that said he sold 37 copies in 2+ weeks.

The wallet-stingy side of me sees this competing with other platformers on my backlog, or frequently-discounted ones like Rayman Legends/Origin or Shantae's Whatever, and thinks $10 is highway robbery.
But the wannabe-gamedev-someday in me respects this as a decently impressive solo project, and I hope its place in your CV helps land you your next dream gig.

To me, the game seems generic. It's easy to blame marketing but I'm not so sure that is to blame entirely. It's easy to point fingers but you have to be honest with yourself and maybe just maybe people didn't like it. It happens. I have the same fear with my projects.

I have a question for you and those commenting in this discussion, would it better for all independent game developers to make a small prototype that is a vertical slice of the game that is of production quality and gage social proof as to whether not a project is worth the long haul?

It seems like amongst indie game developers and those with million dollar advice emphasis the "finish your games" advice. I feel like it's wrong. If you want to operate as a business you need social proof first.

I still congratulate you on finishing a larger game. I haven't done it yet but certainly hope so. It is one hell of a learning exercise and you are defiantly hire-able. One hell of a resume booster. It's not a loss, you are quite a success.

That's why doing a Kickstarter can be a win win. If it fails (and you tried hard to get the word out there), it's probably not gonna have a following or be worth putting time into, if it succeeds, funds and a lot of free exposure. Downside to this is that this is precisely the reason the video game section on Kickstarter is 95% crap.

Every single person who emails you asking for a key or keys is a scammer. Delete them all, don’t give them a second thought.

I'm going to disagree with this. If you receive an email from a YouTuber or streamer, it's quite possibly legit. Verify their email by checking the email address. Most will have a business email listed in the about section on their YouTube channel or on their social media.

I can relate to your story. I spent 2 and a half years in my spare time building a game, while holding a full time job and doing my duties as a husband and father. I did however recruit a couple of friends to help with level design and music. We didn't market. Hardly made anything. I do not regret it at all. I have 1 steam review which is good. I did an indiegala bundle and made a little bit of money but not much. It basically covered the cost of the game developer convention I went to about a month ago. But at the conference there is always a line and I can't get the kids to stop playing it.

I've only ever updated the game to fix bugs, but at this point I'm moving on to bigger and better things (Eventually I'll make a sequel, or really finish it). Sphere Complex was a learning experience.

Now I'm working on a second project (which happens to be a VR project) and I'm taking all the things I learned from that and applying it to this. I'd say the biggest take away is I'm not trying to build a project to go viral and sell a million copies on steam. I found a niche market and I think I can get into government contracts. So instead of trying to sell a million copies I only need to sell a thousand or less. Secondly now that I'm a seasoned veteran of the game engine, I'm much more efficient and I get to learn even new things I didn't do the first time around.

Your project must have been even more popular than mine because I don't get people requesting keys. If I did I'd probably just give it to them because at this point I'd rather see people play it than not at all. To another point about this, I'd rather give 200 free copies away of my game and have 200 people potentially telling their friends to buy it than waiting around for 10 people to pay full price and hope that they tell 10 of their friends. If that makes sense.

Before I respond, I will say I am sorry to hear how badly things have gone for you. I can't imagine how difficult it must be to see four years of work amount to very little like that. However since I imagine your post is here to help educate others, I do have one section I want to chime in on.

I distributed around 50 keys through Keymailer. Fewer than 10 made videos. Most of them were “let’s play this game for 20 minutes to an hour” and none of them cracked 50 views. Some of these people put out multiple videos like this each day, like a factory.
...
Every single person who emails you asking for a key or keys is a scammer. Delete them all, don’t give them a second thought.

As a mid-sized Let's Player I'd like to address these comments.

First off, I send out a lot of emails asking for keys. Personally I feel this is the best way to get keys from developers because I can let them know my channel is a good fit for their game (despite the size) and I give them a link to my channel so they can see for themselves the level of care and attention I will give them.

Now, I don't necessarily do a 10+ episode series with every key I receive this way - sometimes the game just isn't that fun or popular - but if a game is fun and people want to watch it I will keep a series going as long as there are viewers.

Obviously this is not the case with everyone. And it can be difficult as a developer to receive a ton of email requests, that is a lot to look back at. But don't disregard all of them, because when someone is legitimately interested in your game and takes the time to contact you then you're going to get much better results promotion-wise than just by giving out a bunch of keys on keymailer.

I think something that developers seem to think is that just getting their keys out there will equal success, and it's not true. It's just like every other aspect of developing the game, the more effort and time you put into it the better your results will be.

I've received a lot of positive feedback from developers who have given me keys to their game. Not only because I've sold copies to my viewers, but because they receive valuable feedback on how to improve their game and how the game is played because I play their games honestly and as an adult, rather than some kid trying to get some shocking laughs in.

Anyway, I get that maybe I am the exception, but don't think there's no value in YouTube promotion. Startup Company was a very successful EA launch on Steam earlier this year, and the developer heavily credits his success to the YT community, because he went about it in a professional manner.

Back when Super Meat Boy released, it was a hit. The platforming genre was relatively quiet at that point, and SMB brought a refreshing, challenging spin on the genre to wake it back up. Everyone loved it. With the platforming genre revitalized, everyone revved up their engine of choice and started getting to work on some platforming games. And this process continued for years.

And this process still continues. The difference now is that people are sick of it. No one wants platforming games anymore because they're old and busted. At this point, you'd have to do a LOT to actually sell a platforming game. And it's all due to the traffic of the genre. It's backed up, dude.

I was playing the new Layton game the other day, and one of the puzzles presented you with a sign at a crossroads. One sign pointed one way and said "busy road" and the other sign pointed the other way and said "quiet road." The solution was to pick which path would be less congested. Naturally, if everyone sees "quiet road," they're going to go that way in hopes of getting somewhere faster. But then everyone gets on the quiet road, and soon it becomes the busy road. So you choose the "busy road" in this scenario as it has now become the actual quiet road. You get what I'm saying?

The platforming genre is congested. It's a traffic jam. It needs time to clear up. However, while this congestion is going on, don't look at it like you're a failure of a developer. Wrest the reins back from your disappointment and look into tackling one of the various genres that are now pretty quiet with everyone's focus on platformers. Don't sell yourself short. Don't give up. Take this as a lesson, and make something new. Pick a genre, make something completely different. Just don't give up because you expected to be a one-hit wonder with a game in a genre that people are tired of.

I bought the game earlier today and played it for a few hours. It's pretty fun! (Albeit a bit generic.) However, it has some non-trivial performance issues that you definitely need to address:

A) Obviously I don't know exactly how the codebase manages assets, but it's definitely either very poorly written or has a memory leak somewhere that you don't know about. The total size of the "data" directory in the game folder is 134mb. Looking through it, nothing is compressed or in any kind of archive. It's all just loose PNGs/audio files/shader text files.

However, the game when running normally (i.e. in the "midst" of actual gameplay) sits at around 980mb RAM usage on the medium texture quality setting. If you kick it up to the high setting, it shoots all the way up to 2.7 gigs, which is frankly insane considering the relatively low amount of space the assets actually take up on disk.

B) There is a very noticeable transition time between "rooms". I'm running a GTX 780, i7-4771, and have 16 gigs of ram so I'm quite certain it's not a hardware issue. There is nothing about your game that should actually prevent it from running at full speed on even much much lower-end hardware than mine. This might be tied in to the asset management problem, or it could also be unoptimal rendering code.

Sorry to hear it. You clearly put a lot of work into it and it's frustrating to see it fail while some very low effort projects succeed. I'm curious if you got any feedback regarding the price? Perhaps many people who added it to their wishlists were expecting a lower price and are waiting for it to go on sale. The good news is that this is only the beginning, don't give up!

Thank you very much for posting. I'm an indie designer trying to get a concept onto Steam. I've always been confused with the genre type I want to start off with and this type of "platformer" genre is very much integrated into my game. I'm not giving up on my concept as I feel it has potential, but I will definitely take your word on the marketing scheme and do my level best. Again, thank you for posting your reviews and conclusions and do not be disheartened. You have actually climbed out of the initiation and got a decent headstart according to my perspective. Best of luck out there and best wishes ahead.

For all the difficulty of actual dev, I feel like this is the hardest part. It's what we all fear, and what too often happens. Sorry, buddy.

"Do marketing" is a common refrain, but after trying to figure out exactly what that entails for the last couple years while developing, I still basically have no idea. I'm afraid of botching my own launch. They say to develop relationships with the press, but that is such an odd prescription to me... If you can even get their attention, what constitutes a press relationship? Business-only project updates? Polite niceties? Pizza parties? Sordid gossip?

First of all, congratulations on shipping. Most gamedev projects never get that far.

Second, don't fret the low sales. This is a learning experience. Get involved with other indies like yourself, share what you've learned, learn from others.

Jake Burkett from Grey Alien Games started off by putting effort into games that didn't do well, and has since learned to better. He has managed to make a living doing what he loves, though he hasn't really had a hit yet:

So here's my thoughts when I see it (and this is practically what I think every time I see a new indie game) - "Looks cute and fun, I'll add it to my wishlist and grab it on sale".

It's not really even about the price, it's just that my plate is full of games right now - since it's on my wishlist I'll get periodically reminded that it exists, until such time that I'm in the mood for it. I wouldn't be too surprised if your first day of it being on sale was a better haul than the actual release day - the steam market is just so crowded with stuff that, as a consumer I have no reason to buy anything for full price. Intentionally or not, Steam has trained this behavior into its consumers.

Wow the art and music are fantastic. You did all that yourself and coded it? Fair play

Don't give up on it. Just because it didn't take off immediately doesn't mean its dead on the water. Keep pushing it everywhere you can. AFAIK Angry Birds took a couple of years to tip over into the behemoth it became

Maybe get it in on other platforms (Switch/Vita/PS4/XB1, maybe iOS/Android if you can make a control scheme). Switch is ripe right now if you're fast

You spent 4 years making it and it looks and sounds great. Spend at least a bit of time pimping it before writing it off 😎👍

I'm not sure how free to play would work outside of a demo. As for bundles, everything I saw indicated that they're for years-old games that don't need the help or the current sales are negligible. I was against it at first, but hey, it doesn't really matter now, does It? Ha.

Just want to say you should be proud of yourself. So very, very few devs ship a game. It's a truly elite club you're in.

You're game may have flopped but you're a legit game dev now! If I were you I would use this experience to get a well paying job at a legit game studio. Level up your learnings and network there, then maybe later in life raise some investment $$ for a larger scale project/market.

Hey, as someone who made a flop indie album in a band recently (as the frontman), don't be discouraged or let others define your creation. You made a goddamn fucking game. How cool is that? Take what you learned and make a new one. Your game looks cool by the way, I'm going to check it out later.

Btw, I'm getting into VR game development as a CS programmer by my day job and could use a hand. Teamwork often gets further than solo, if you want to join, send me a message (or whoever else does).

The Indiepocalypse? But I feel like the interest in and support for indie gaming is higher than it's ever been. Genre, marketing, and presentation are just factors a lot of devs fail to capitalize on or look into, and they end up flopping because of it. You have here this person who spent 4.5 years making a charming looking platformer, but that genre is stagnating because everyone makes their game a platformer. If you absolutely WANT to make a platformer, you really need to market and present to people what's setting it apart from others. It's hard to make an original platforming game in this day and age.

For comparison's sake, look at Stardew Valley. One person, same amount of dev time, did everything himself from scratch. Commercial success. So I dunno about the "Indiepocalypse," but perhaps the "Platformerpocalypse" instead. Indie developers should set out to do more, and aspire to do more. I like platformers, but that's all we're seeing people make anymore. It's not a mystery to me why people inherently brush off the genre on sight.

I dunno about the Indiepocalypse. The game looks quite good, but it's still just a platformer and it looks kinda bland, mechanics wise. It looks like something I've seen dozens of times. The platformer genre is oversaturated. I see no reason to play this game over the other, more interesting ones, especially for 10 bucks.

If you don't put paid support behind your posts on social media, they're going to hit a non-existant organic following. You have to spend money to reach people and give them an incentive to follow you.

Yeah do marketing. Nothing worse than working on something for years and then no-one knows your work exists.

However, there are still a lot you could do to mitigate issues. Just takes a lot of work. Marketing isn't easy. Took me months to create a database for press contacts and I worked around the clock every day.

The other comments already gave you great feedback on your marketing. One other thing that stood out to me: Looking at the screenshots, your graphic style is kinda hard to read. It took me a few seconds to actually find the player character. It's because you use strong contrast and outlines for background props that have no relevance for gameplay. The contrast must always be between the gameplay-relevant bits (i.e. player, enemies, platforms, etc) and the background, not within the background itself.

Looking at the trailer i think that steam is not likely the right platform for this game. This actually looks like something that people who have a PlayStation Vita would enjoy.

While as a platform the Vita failed the attach rate on games is incredibly high there, people are basically screaming for games and your release wouldn't drown in new releases like it probably did on steam.

This "I spent about four and a half years making the game solo. Did all the art, engine, music, etc, you get the idea. Everything but the voices."

It's doom to failed, a game cannot be excellent with a Jack of all trade, master of none, it always make "meh" game. there's a reason why people are specialist, Make a character is not just painting someone, it's design, visual development, understanding of so many aspect of doing an appealing character, it's also all about the writting etc. It's the same for every aspect of a game.

to be a solo developper you need to be a genius so you're EXCELLENT at everything. Else you find a people to complete your main skill. Except from Notch, i'm pretty sure 80% of people cannot name a single successful solo developper.

I am just one piece of data for you, but I can tell you that I have zero interest in platformer games, and the vaguely neopets/"furry" art style has no appeal for me. If you marketed this game perfectly, there would still be a zero percent chance of me buying it.

“I love the graphics and the gameplay is top-notch!”
YouTuber with 3 subscribers

“Truly a monumental step forward in storytelling and games as an art.”
BS artist

Really? You ran with that it's like you tried to sabotage yourself. Fix the trailer and reviews. Just shake off the launch as your price was too high. You'll find your niche in a sale. Nothing was wrong with the price really because people love to get a deal and this will offer one. Patience.

I can't imagine how you must be feeling right now. I have never put that much effort into anything other than work.

To be completely honest, no amount of marketing would have changed the result. The game is another indie 2d platformer. Indie games can't compete on volume or production quality, they can only compete with creativity. From the info on steam your game seems to lack anything that makes it unique.

OTOH if you could only put half of that effort into a new game with original ideas you'd be already way ahead of the competition. Make a few prototypes without investing much time, find new mechanics. Once you have something that works and is unique go for it.

You can always get free advertising by announcing your game on /r/linux_gaming, if you added Linux support. The availability of games on Linux is low enough that small games get decent amounts of attention.

This might be seen as a negative comment, but I am trying hard to be purely honest and constructive here: your game deserves to fail.

You didn't do any marketing, and every aspect of your production shows it. It's as if you arrogantly made a game in a bubble and didn't listen to any outside advice or pay attention to anything outside your environment. The game art feels like a deviant art furry/hentai piece, the music is completely out of place and is abrasive, you don't have a demo, you don't have a devblog, you don't have ANY hope of getting traction. If you DID have any mild success I would feel bad for other projects that actually DID do things correctly and still didn't gain any traction and lost time and money.

A lot of the advice in here is very good, surprisingly great - it's just that it assumes that your product is problem free - there's an insanely niche market of people who would buy this, and even then, there's probably better examples of out there who actually did take the time to do marketing and examine their target audience, hire an actual artist, and devote some energy to researching the industry they're selling in.

Like, well done on getting this out there, that's one of the hardest things to do in this world (break free from the norm and be entrepreneurial and actually FINISH a product, it's not easy) and that is something to be admired, but you also need to be realistic about what you did wrong. Pick it all up, take what you've done, and re-think every aspect of it. Change your approach entirely. Be marketing-first and stop arrogantly thinking that you can build a product, push it out there and it will just achieve great success on its own. The market is far too competitive for that.

Use this product as a stepping stone to something great, make this is a story about doing everything wrong first, in order to learn how to do things right.

I kept a current page on IndieDB and an active Twitter (a few tweets with pictures each week) for a couple years. I got a few follows but it never really took off. I guess I didn’t do it right. It ended up not helping.

Yeah, Twitter is such a black art for me. I have an active Twitter account with screenshots of my WIP games - which often garners little interests apart for a few bots here and there. Guess the screenshots were ugly ... I dunno

Said Twitter account eventually ended up being an indirect means to chat about art with other devs instead :P